5 ms·

An understated story of Nazi superiority maybe: Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat (2005): http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034 http://ww

An understated story of Nazi superiority maybe: Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat (2005): http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034 ender and hitler: sympathy for the superman (20 years later) (2007): http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality (2004): http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

saturdaysaint 13y ago
Granted, I read it at an older age than its intended audience, but I found EG to be tedious Objectivism-lite. There's little of what I look for in literature or life - humor, surprise, adventure, character evolution. The chosen one (a tedious sci-fi trope without a bit of invention) mostly has it all figured out from page 1, and the book turns into a painful slog as he nears the finish line laden with the all consuming importance of his task. If only all of us had outside authorities telling us what's important and we just had to focus with laserlike intensity on those preordained goals. As it turns out, determining our own values and participating with other people with their own independent values and agendas is a pretty significant part of the journey for most of the interesting and/or great people I've read about. I mean, it's funny that liking Ender's Game is such a nerd cliche when the paths of actual tech luminaries (Jobs and Gates) are so much more winding and free-spirited (and therefore interesting to me at least).
- EliRivers 13y ago
  Everyone reads something different from it. When I read it, it seemed to me that Ender spent a lot of time hating the path laid out for him, often able to see what was coming but unable to do anything to stop it, and his issues with it come close to rendering him a catatonic mess.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  I think you underestimate how much kids really are set on tracks with preordained goals. Things don't really open up unless you are born into a very well off family (like Gates, by the way) or until you finish school.
phaemon 13y ago
I don't find any of those convincing. Looks like they went looking for connections and ignored all the differences. Including a genocide in a book doesn't make it about Hitler. You might just as well say it's about the Armenian genocide, or the Native American one.
- generj 13y ago
  Heck, the Armenian genocide even has more textual support - Petra is Armenian.
slm_HN 13y ago
This is why Hacker News should stick to Hacker News. It's ridiculous to think Ender's Game has anything to do with "Nazi superiority", whatever that is. I read the book as a kid and liked it immensely. As an adult I discovered that Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and that a lot of people just have blind ignorant hatred of Mormons. This was a sad discovery, but it did have the benefit of allowing me to dismiss their diatribes.
- eropple 13y ago
  You would be hard-pressed to find a serious contingent of people who dislike Card because he's a Mormon and not because he's a homophobic authoritarian and more than a little bit of a jerk.
- epi8 13y ago
  I dislike him because of his stated, explicit bias against LGBT folk, and his frequent rants about the "gay agenda". True, I think his Mormonism motivates these things, but many if not most Mormons feel differently (I have no idea the exact statistics), and were he still Mormon and not a homophobic bigot, then I wouldn't have a problem with him. I also liked Ender's Game as a kid. I like it now. I just think the author is a jackass.
  - generj 13y ago
    I'm Mormon, and OSC isn't representative, especially of younger generations. As Christians we should be welcoming to everyone, and I have a very hard time reconciling OSC's statements to his professed beliefs. In fact, we consistently have had guidance from Church leaders about being welcoming and kind to everyone, and even some rather pointed reminders about following that guidance in regards to LGBT. You'd be hard pressed to find statistics, especially any that had a representative poll outside of Utah. Of course, he is crazy in lots of other ways - read any of his political articles. He seems to revel in stating things in insensitive ways, and then likes to play the martyr afterwards. Nonetheless, his fiction is almost always excellent, so I avidly read him.
jdbernard 13y ago
I'm sorry. It is very difficult for me to take you seriously when you immediately compare someone to Hitler. The discussion has barely started and Godwin's Law has already been proved true. Still, I figured I would at least read through the articles you listed, but they lost me pretty quick too. From the article by Kessel: The novel repeatedly tells us that Ender is morally spotless; though he ultimately takes on guilt for the extermination of the alien buggers, his assuming this guilt is a gratuitous act. [...] In this Card argues that the morality of an act is based solely on the intentions of the person acting. Already it seems the author of the article has read a different book than the Ender's Game I read. Ender is not "excused" from the guilt of his actions because his intentions were good, he is excused because he did not know that the war he was fighting was real-life. He was told, and had every reason to believe that they were exercises, a game. His teachers spent a lot of effort to maintain this deception because they understood that if Ender knew it was real he would not kill like they wanted him to. By the author's logic we are all guilty of murder when we play violent video games. The very next reference to an actual scene from the book is wrong again: On the very first page of the novel an adult lies to Ender about something that is going to hurt him: the doctor removing the surgically implanted monitor that Ender has worn while being evaluated by the IE training agency swears that the removal “won’t hurt a bit.”4 But in the event it is excruciating. The author implies that the adult purposefully lies to Ender and knowingly inflict pain beyond what is normal for a doctor's visit. First: children learn quickly that when adults say "This isn't going to hurt a bit" they are usually lying, as it will hurt a bit. So this white lie is a very relate-able experience for children, not "relentless, undeserved torment" as the author states one sentence before. The doctor certainly did not expect it to be severe pain: "It's designed to be removed. Without infection, without damage. But there'll be some tickling, and some people say they have a feeling of something missing. You'll keep looking around for something. Something you were looking for, but you can't find it, and you can't remember what it was. So I'll tell you. It's the monitor you're looking for, and it isn't there. In a few days that feeling will pass." When Ender experience severe pain as a result, the doctor is almost as surprised as Ender. He is unprepared for the violence of Ender's pain, is obviously upset at how much pain Ender has endured, and is upset with himself about it: The doctor was trembling; his voice shook as he spoke. "They leave these things in the kids for three years, what do they expect? We could have switched him off, do you realize that? We could have unplugged his brain for all time. [...] Could have unplugged him forever. I don't have the brains of a bugger." But notice that he does not express any misgivings about it until after Ender has his violent reaction. Surely he has never seen this reaction before or he would have been more prepared to deal with it. Already the author's arguments are resting on very shaky readings of the source text, but I'll keep going a little further. His next several paragraphs focus on further examples of how Card subjects Ender to "relentless, undeserved torment" with the implication that this is done simply to make the reader sympathetic to Ender. Here are some excerpts of his examples: When Ender is not being lied to by authorities, he is being bullied. [...] From where I sit, this is is very common in schools. Kids are lied to by authority figures and bullies in schools act with impunity regularly. Sure, this is making Ender out to be a sympathetic character for many kids, but not because he is being subjected to extreme, unusual torture, but because he is facing things they face everyday in real life. The family offers no haven from assault. [...] Again, this form of "relentless, undeserved torment" is sadly not atypical. Yet, for reasons that are never made clear, Ender never tells his parents; he learns early to hide his fear and hurt. [...] Again not atypical. One might ask where Ender’s parents or teachers are when Ender is physically assaulted. This question reveals a second mechanism Card uses to generate sympathy: in Ender’s Game, adults or authority are never there to protect. Again, not atypical. In fact, this is a key point in the book. Ender is being manipulated to believe he will always have to solve his own problems. I find it hard to believe Card is sneakily trying to manipulate the reader into feeling sympathetic for Ender when he tells the reader about this directly in the book. The author of the article seems to be trying to make the point that Ender was morally culpable for his actions regardless of his intention of the circumstances. At this point I think he is trying to set the groundwork for the argument that Card is purposefully manipulating the reader into being so sympathetic to Ender as a character that we are willing to forgive him for his crimes. So far the author's biased treatment of the source has biased me against his article to such a degree that I do not know if I can continue reading with an open mind. His argument as I understand it so far seems to have trivial flaws. Are we always responsible for the results of our actions, even when we are purposefully manipulated into circumstances where we have been deceived about what the outcome will be?
mcguire 13y ago
Thanks for posting those links! While I do think the Hitler-Ender link is a bit too far to stretch, the Kessel essay does articulate some of the discomfort I had about Ender's Game. When I read Card's quote, “The humans in Ender’s Game never imagined that they were obliterating another species; rather they thought they were destroying an invading species’ ability to make war. Genocide was the result of not understanding the effect on the buggers of the death of the hive queen.” all I could think of was the careful set-up of how Ender didn't know he'd killed Stilson and Bonzo.

saturdaysaint 13y ago

Granted, I read it at an older age than its intended audience, but I found EG to be tedious Objectivism-lite. There's little of what I look for in literature or life - humor, surprise, adventure, character evolution. The chosen one (a tedious sci-fi trope without a bit of invention) mostly has it all figured out from page 1, and the book turns into a painful slog as he nears the finish line laden with the all consuming importance of his task. If only all of us had outside authorities telling us what's important and we just had to focus with laserlike intensity on those preordained goals. As it turns out, determining our own values and participating with other people with their own independent values and agendas is a pretty significant part of the journey for most of the interesting and/or great people I've read about. I mean, it's funny that liking Ender's Game is such a nerd cliche when the paths of actual tech luminaries (Jobs and Gates) are so much more winding and free-spirited (and therefore interesting to me at least).

EliRivers 13y ago
Everyone reads something different from it. When I read it, it seemed to me that Ender spent a lot of time hating the path laid out for him, often able to see what was coming but unable to do anything to stop it, and his issues with it come close to rendering him a catatonic mess.
humanrebar 13y ago
I think you underestimate how much kids really are set on tracks with preordained goals. Things don't really open up unless you are born into a very well off family (like Gates, by the way) or until you finish school.

phaemon 13y ago

I don't find any of those convincing. Looks like they went looking for connections and ignored all the differences. Including a genocide in a book doesn't make it about Hitler. You might just as well say it's about the Armenian genocide, or the Native American one.

generj 13y ago
Heck, the Armenian genocide even has more textual support - Petra is Armenian.

slm_HN 13y ago

This is why Hacker News should stick to Hacker News. It's ridiculous to think Ender's Game has anything to do with "Nazi superiority", whatever that is. I read the book as a kid and liked it immensely. As an adult I discovered that Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and that a lot of people just have blind ignorant hatred of Mormons. This was a sad discovery, but it did have the benefit of allowing me to dismiss their diatribes.

eropple 13y ago
You would be hard-pressed to find a serious contingent of people who dislike Card because he's a Mormon and not because he's a homophobic authoritarian and more than a little bit of a jerk.
epi8 13y ago
I dislike him because of his stated, explicit bias against LGBT folk, and his frequent rants about the "gay agenda". True, I think his Mormonism motivates these things, but many if not most Mormons feel differently (I have no idea the exact statistics), and were he still Mormon and not a homophobic bigot, then I wouldn't have a problem with him. I also liked Ender's Game as a kid. I like it now. I just think the author is a jackass.
- generj 13y ago
  I'm Mormon, and OSC isn't representative, especially of younger generations. As Christians we should be welcoming to everyone, and I have a very hard time reconciling OSC's statements to his professed beliefs. In fact, we consistently have had guidance from Church leaders about being welcoming and kind to everyone, and even some rather pointed reminders about following that guidance in regards to LGBT. You'd be hard pressed to find statistics, especially any that had a representative poll outside of Utah. Of course, he is crazy in lots of other ways - read any of his political articles. He seems to revel in stating things in insensitive ways, and then likes to play the martyr afterwards. Nonetheless, his fiction is almost always excellent, so I avidly read him.

jdbernard 13y ago

I'm sorry. It is very difficult for me to take you seriously when you immediately compare someone to Hitler. The discussion has barely started and Godwin's Law has already been proved true. Still, I figured I would at least read through the articles you listed, but they lost me pretty quick too. From the article by Kessel: The novel repeatedly tells us that Ender is morally spotless; though he ultimately takes on guilt for the extermination of the alien buggers, his assuming this guilt is a gratuitous act. [...] In this Card argues that the morality of an act is based solely on the intentions of the person acting. Already it seems the author of the article has read a different book than the Ender's Game I read. Ender is not "excused" from the guilt of his actions because his intentions were good, he is excused because he did not know that the war he was fighting was real-life. He was told, and had every reason to believe that they were exercises, a game. His teachers spent a lot of effort to maintain this deception because they understood that if Ender knew it was real he would not kill like they wanted him to. By the author's logic we are all guilty of murder when we play violent video games. The very next reference to an actual scene from the book is wrong again: On the very first page of the novel an adult lies to Ender about something that is going to hurt him: the doctor removing the surgically implanted monitor that Ender has worn while being evaluated by the IE training agency swears that the removal “won’t hurt a bit.”4 But in the event it is excruciating. The author implies that the adult purposefully lies to Ender and knowingly inflict pain beyond what is normal for a doctor's visit. First: children learn quickly that when adults say "This isn't going to hurt a bit" they are usually lying, as it will hurt a bit. So this white lie is a very relate-able experience for children, not "relentless, undeserved torment" as the author states one sentence before. The doctor certainly did not expect it to be severe pain: "It's designed to be removed. Without infection, without damage. But there'll be some tickling, and some people say they have a feeling of something missing. You'll keep looking around for something. Something you were looking for, but you can't find it, and you can't remember what it was. So I'll tell you. It's the monitor you're looking for, and it isn't there. In a few days that feeling will pass." When Ender experience severe pain as a result, the doctor is almost as surprised as Ender. He is unprepared for the violence of Ender's pain, is obviously upset at how much pain Ender has endured, and is upset with himself about it: The doctor was trembling; his voice shook as he spoke. "They leave these things in the kids for three years, what do they expect? We could have switched him off, do you realize that? We could have unplugged his brain for all time. [...] Could have unplugged him forever. I don't have the brains of a bugger." But notice that he does not express any misgivings about it until after Ender has his violent reaction. Surely he has never seen this reaction before or he would have been more prepared to deal with it. Already the author's arguments are resting on very shaky readings of the source text, but I'll keep going a little further. His next several paragraphs focus on further examples of how Card subjects Ender to "relentless, undeserved torment" with the implication that this is done simply to make the reader sympathetic to Ender. Here are some excerpts of his examples: When Ender is not being lied to by authorities, he is being bullied. [...] From where I sit, this is is very common in schools. Kids are lied to by authority figures and bullies in schools act with impunity regularly. Sure, this is making Ender out to be a sympathetic character for many kids, but not because he is being subjected to extreme, unusual torture, but because he is facing things they face everyday in real life. The family offers no haven from assault. [...] Again, this form of "relentless, undeserved torment" is sadly not atypical. Yet, for reasons that are never made clear, Ender never tells his parents; he learns early to hide his fear and hurt. [...] Again not atypical. One might ask where Ender’s parents or teachers are when Ender is physically assaulted. This question reveals a second mechanism Card uses to generate sympathy: in Ender’s Game, adults or authority are never there to protect. Again, not atypical. In fact, this is a key point in the book. Ender is being manipulated to believe he will always have to solve his own problems. I find it hard to believe Card is sneakily trying to manipulate the reader into feeling sympathetic for Ender when he tells the reader about this directly in the book. The author of the article seems to be trying to make the point that Ender was morally culpable for his actions regardless of his intention of the circumstances. At this point I think he is trying to set the groundwork for the argument that Card is purposefully manipulating the reader into being so sympathetic to Ender as a character that we are willing to forgive him for his crimes. So far the author's biased treatment of the source has biased me against his article to such a degree that I do not know if I can continue reading with an open mind. His argument as I understand it so far seems to have trivial flaws. Are we always responsible for the results of our actions, even when we are purposefully manipulated into circumstances where we have been deceived about what the outcome will be?

mcguire 13y ago

Thanks for posting those links! While I do think the Hitler-Ender link is a bit too far to stretch, the Kessel essay does articulate some of the discomfort I had about Ender's Game. When I read Card's quote, “The humans in Ender’s Game never imagined that they were obliterating another species; rather they thought they were destroying an invading species’ ability to make war. Genocide was the result of not understanding the effect on the buggers of the death of the hive queen.” all I could think of was the careful set-up of how Ender didn't know he'd killed Stilson and Bonzo.